There's a lot of blood. There's no good reason for you to pay attention to that detail first, but it's the only thing crossing your mind at the moment. Playing a lot of video games, you know, you think you ought to be able to see your death coming - like some kind of redicule displacment or something in your HUD. Christ, they could've at least given you a pop-up ad that gave you a little warning beforehand. Isn't that kind of the implicit promise behind cybernetic tech, anyway? Make death more visible, put more distance between the two of you? But, no. Nothing but you, and the blood, and your favorite torn jacket lying in the ditch behind you. Your car's nowhere to be found, either. You can hear faraway motors in the air, and they seem to be getting closer. You get the feeling whoever/whatever did this to you coming to finish the job. So what's the plan, Nicky? The smartest idea would be to [[run]]. But then again, you certainly don't want to leave [[your jacket]] behind. And then, maybe you ought to check your [[reticule]] to determine what actually happened to you.You're wearing size 14 skate shoes and you're running through the woods in the middle of the night. Oh, and your reticule says it's about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So, maybe you were stretching the truth to yourself when you thought this was the smart choice. You're almost definitely on private property - you catch glimpses of what look like deer hunting blinds sticking up among the leaves and near-dead trees poking out of the darkness. You've never heard of multiple deer blinds on the same property before. Whoever owns this land must be loaded. You keep moving. Suddenly, you hear movement close - REAL close to yours. What's left of your breath comes out in a gasp, and you stop. Deep breaths that border on dry heaves escape you as you look up and see a whole mess of deer run across the way. Deer. Just how far out of Holden Annex were you? It's been years since you last saw a deer IRL. When you were just a kid, they'd amass in the backyard of your house. Your mind fills with memories of all the times you've woken up early in the morning, only to find a throng of wild does and bucks just chilling outside. Your mother used to call you her little apple dumpling, and said that the deer came because they could smell how sweet you were. The night sky is obscured by thick clouds, so trying to point yourself north isn't much of an option. The only marker you can find anywhere is the tell-tale glow of the clouds to the right of you. There's streetlights there, so that's where you're headed. You've defaulted to video game logic again, but why not? It's all you have to go on at this point. From a distance, you can hear cars pulling up alongside the place where you woke up, and hear the sounds of people slamming doors. Time to pick up the pace. You are in [[Smithson Forest, 2:20 AM]].Approaching the ditch, you start to recall every single nasty joke about girls like you found in a ditch somewhere. There were those kinds of jokes that would float around some go-nowhere party like stale weed smoke, getting under your skin and getting a weak polite laugh out of you so you're not the only person not laughing. It crosses your mind, because thinking about those jokes and seeing yourself in the same situation makes you feel like you're not even there. You're not a person in this moment, but someone's punchline. The only thing you're missing is blond hair. Not that any of that matters, of course, because you're the one who's lost a pint of blood, not them. Anyway, your jacket. It's FUBAR. You've only got a slice on the inside of your forearm, but your jacket looks like some dog got a hold of it. There's holes and rips all over the place, and it's drenched in mud. It was this beautiful powder blue varsity jacket, and it's ruined. You almost consider lugging it along in the vain hope that somebody can fix it like new, but you've got the feeling your mystery antagionist(s) have other ideas in mind. Your mom'll be happy, though - she never liked that thing anyway. You're currently on [[Clampton Beltway, 2:14 AM]].You reach a hand up to the right-hand side of your face. You don't have a mirror handy, but you remember what you're feeling for: a metal faceplate with three indentations that react to your fingerprint. You press a cold finger into the middle indention, and your vision floods with text. Breathing. Heart rate. Even bacterial information flash on 'screen' in front of you, the only reliable medical service you've had in your whole life. Aside from the obvious, everything appears fine. Most of everything checks out, aside from a few odd bruises recorded around your body. A few problems are nibbling away at you. What, precisely, happened to you tonight? You're out in the middle of...not a freeway or anything, but you could probably hitchhike back to the Holden Annex, assuming you're close to Interstate 6. Shit, assuming you're in the right state. The noise of engines is getting louder. Engines, plural. There's several of them coming down the road, and you can tell by the cracks in the pavement that wherever you are doesn't get a lot of traffic. Someone's coming for you. You're currently on [[Clampton Beltway, 2:14 AM]].You being a cyborg, it's a little hard to believe that you're having so much trouble not walking into trees. You've walked face first into two trees in the past three minutes. The only thing keeping you upright, it seems, is your eye enhancements giving you partial night vision. You've been told by multiple friends that this night vision creates a bright yellow iris around your pupil that makes you look a bit like a cat. Right after they tell you how weird it is that you even have cybernetic tech installed in the first place. Seeing as their target demographic is mainly aging dudebros, an obese woman going on 30 being able to see through walls feels a bit anachronistic. Well, not for you, obviously. For you, it feels awesome. It doesn't help with the cold, though. You curl your arms around yourself defensively as you barrel down the canvas of wet leaves and branches around you. You're well aware you're in danger right now. There are people behind you, and they sound pissed. They sound like they probably have guns. So why was it that the scariest thing about this whole situation wasn't that, but the forest itself? Even with night vision on, you can just barely see your own nose in front of your face. It's dark, and damp, and you have close to no clue how long this area goes on for. You might well be out here for hours, just running full hilt with no sense of progress - and that was terrifying. In lieu of any manageable answers, you decide to stay hopeful and play some guessing games as to what might be waiting for you at the end out here. Maybe you'll hit a road that'll bring you within spitting distance of Interstate 6! Maybe you'll find a well-staffed diner sitting just outside of a wealth of bushes! Maybe you'll get caught in a bear trap and die. [[At least it's not windy.]] A bolt of lightning goes across a cloud, and if there was thunder, you could hardly notice it above your heartbeat thumping in your ear. Looking behind you, you can see the men following you have whipped out flashlights, and your body sticks out in a forest with surprisingly little foliage outside of the trees. Oh, and the wind picked up. The shit sandwich that is your day has officially become a Dagwood, is the point here. Your luck runs out, and you trip. Falling over, you take a moment to just lie there, dazed. Just like back at the ditch, you feel as though your current situation is just part of some contrived slasher film. You feel like you're not real, but especially not real in this context. Like someone else is the final girl, and your character doesn't even have a name in the script. Girl #4. How were you getting back to Holden Annex, at this point? It was hopeless. But. Your mom didn't raise a quitter. And it just so happened that there was one last option in front of you. There's an incline next to where you fell, and it might give you [[a good vantage point]].Your memories flash back to when you used to be big into aerobics when you were a kid, waling along steel beams and crashing into those yellow foam blocks they put as cushioning in these big holes you could jump into and swim in. Thinking about that certainly made crawling on your belly in a rainy forest less depressing. Marginally. Each grasp at the ground felt like you could only grab leaves, every motion upward less certain than the last. Your only means of gauging if you're getting closer to the top is by measuring a tree about a yard away. Branch by decaying branch, you can guess that you're mostly making progress upward. You're cold and wet and everything in you just wants to collapse among the leaves and have a great big sobbing fit. But you are making progress. Not enough, it seems, to prevent a bullet tearing a chunk out of the top of your leg. You enter panic mode, shuffling upwards in a frenzy and kicking up leaves behind you. You feel blood exit your new wound, and it occurs to you that panicking isn't actually getting you any further upward. You can hear whoever shot you laughing from within the thicket. Your shooter's laughter shouldn't be making you feel as bad as it is. You raise a trembling fist up and let it fall in front of you with a dull thud, realizing you've made it to the top of the hill - just in time for your would-be killers to catch up with you. You raise your head up, and directly in front of you, is the biggest deer you've ever seen in your entire life. You laugh out loud, because of all the things you expected to see tonight...this deer didn't look real. It looked like an artist painted a deer and then messed up the proportions of the forest around it. This was your last thought before blacking out. ... ... ... You wake up. You are at your apartment in [[Holden Square, 8:52 AM]]. You ache to the bone, and your leg hurts to move. Actually, your whole body feels like you couldn't hope to move it if you tried, like your nervous system just isn't up to the task of giving your body motion. What had happened wasn't a dream, by the feel of things. Actually, you didn't really care if it was a dream or not. Any situation where you wake up in your own bed is a good situation, you're sure. You manage to shuffle your feet onto the floor after sever minutes of corecion, and you stand upright. As with every other morning, getting up pops open your web browser inside your reticule. Normally, this is where you'd get your news for the day, but it looks like a different website entirely has come up. You take the time to glance over it as you silently pray that you remembered to buy orange juice your last time out. 'Mad cow disease 1998 scare: the facts' is the title of the site, and it starts by explaining how back in the late 90's, some people were found with bovine spongiform encephalopathy in their systems, presumed to have been from tainted ground beef. Later studies suggest that the disease was actually contracted from eating deer venison. As you pour yourself a bowl of cereal, it goes on to discuss how certain vigilante groups would take it upon themselves to kill off wild deer to 'heroically' prevent the contagion from spreading to other humans - even in cases where there was no reason to suspect the disease was present. As usual, you've got no clue how such random things end up in your search history. Just like you've got no clue why you're drinking orange juice before you brush your teeth. You head to the bathroom, half-dazed still, and click on the lights. [[You see horns.]]Atop your head, you see a massive pair of deer antlers. This barely nets a reaction out of your half-asleep self, but you take a moment to acknowledge that you're at least a five-pointer, maybe a six. You yawn, and turn your head from side to side, slowly putting together that you're not seeing things, the antlers are moving along with the rest of your head. They're real. Moreover, you examine the rest of your body. You have fresh bandages on you, bandages consistent with the injuries you got in your not-dream. That means you still have no idea what happened to you last night. And your jacket's a lost cause for real. Damn it. Still, antlers! You take a moment to admire how they accent your dark skin. It crosses your mind that this will make it harder to find a job, but then again, so did your cyber eye. Of course, if this meant that last night was real, that means that you almost died, and...what? That you somehow grew full adult antlers out of your skull? Wouldn't that really hurt? You shake your head. That couldn't have been how it went. All you remember is that a bunch of people wanted you dead, and they failed. They failed, and now you've got to get some grocery shopping done.